Suppose G is a reductive algebraic group, T is a Cartan subgroup of G, N= Norm (T), and W= N/T is the Weyl group. If w W has order d, it is natural to ask about the orders lifts of w to N. It is straightforward to see that the minimal order of a lift of w has order d or 2d, but it can be a subtle question which holds. We first consider the question of when W itself lifts to a subgroup of N (in which case every element of W lifts to an element of N of the same order). We then consider two natural classes of elements: regular and elliptic. In the latter case all lifts of w are conjugate, and therefore have the same order. We also consider the twisted case.

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Lutwak, Yang and Zhang defined the cone volume functional U over convex polytopes in R^n containing the origin in their interiors, and conjectured that the greatest lower bound on the ratio of this centro-affine invariant U to volume V is attained by parallelotopes. In this paper, we give affirmative answers to the conjecture in R^2 and R^3. Some new sharp inequalities characterizing parallelotopes in Rn are established. Moreover, a simplified proof for the conjecture restricted to the class of origin-symmetric convex polytopes in Rn is provided.

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In this paper, we derive two subgradient estimates of the CR heat equation in a closed pseudohermitian 3-manifold which are served as the CR version of the Li-Yau gradient estimate. With its applications, we first get a subgradient estimate of the logarithm of the positive solution of the CR heat equation. Secondly, we have the Harnack inequality and upper bound estimate for the heat kernel. Finally, we obtain Perelman-type entropy formulae for the CR heat equation.